Police video shows the Aug. 20, 2017, arrest of Charlie Malzahn, the man being questioned in the disappearance of Glendale teacher Cathryn Gorospe. She was last seen Oct. 6 when she bailed Malzahn out of jail in Flagstaff. Williams Police Department

Cathryn Gorospe was stabbed 14 times and run over with her SUV, newly obtained records show. What led the felon she bailed out of jail to kill the Glendale kindergarten teacher remains a mystery.

Cathryn Gorospe(Photo: Deer Valley Unified School District)

Story Highlights

Cathryn Gorospe went missing after she didn't return home from bailing Charlie Malzahn out of jail.

Her remains were found Oct. 13 on a remote roadside in Mayer.

Though he hasn't been formally charged, Charlie Malzahn—the only suspect—confessed to the attack.

Records help answer a host of questions about the case that captivated the region.

But on Oct. 6, hopeful that she could help put Malzahn on the straight and narrow, she put her car and house in Phoenix up for collateral to cover the $20,000 bond. And she had a list of conditions Malzahn agreed to follow when they spoke the night before.

At 10:02 p.m., Malzahn walked out of jail a free man, and by the time the night was over, Gorospe would be dead. She was stabbed 14 times, run over with her own Toyota Rav4 and left in a hastily dug grave.

Explanations about what led to the exceptionally violent attack remain a mystery, even with the recent release of reports chronicling law enforcement's search for answers and a family's pursuit for closure six months since her disappearance and slaying.

"It would be nice to know why," said Cory Gorospe, Cathryn's brother, in an interview last week with The Republic. "At this point, I've kind of given up on caring why he did it."

Records obtained by The Arizona Republic add disturbing insight into a sordid romance that left a kindergarten class at Arrowhead Elementary without their teacher and a family mourning the loss of a woman who put others before herself, all the way to the grave.

Malzahn continues to be held without bond in a Maricopa County jail in connection with an October assault and carjacking in the Phoenix area hours after Gorospe's death. He has not yet been formally charged with her murder, though that process is ongoing, according to public court records.

Taking pity on an injured waiter

Charlie Malzahn(Photo: Arizona Department of Corrections)

Gorospe met Malzahn in Williams, a town of 6,000 off Interstate 40 where she worked during summers with the Grand Canyon Railway, supplementing her income as a kindergarten teacher in Glendale.

Malzahn, the troubled stepson of the town's police chief, was a waiter in town at the Wild West Junction, a tourist hub near the railroad along Route 66.

He was working there July 10 when Gorospe walked in for a meal. She was his customer, and she noticed he had an injured foot. She returned to the restaurant the next day, looking for the waiter, hoping to help him.

Malzahn wasn't there. But she got a phone number — the number for Malzahn's sister, who ended up connecting the two.

Their relationship blossomed. She paid for his apartment in Williams. They grew closer over the rest of July.

She thought Malzahn was getting his life together.

He was working full time, and her presence could only help him.

Jail calls, baby's blood

When Malzahn was arrested in August for allegedly brandishing a gun at his sister's kids and stealing her car near Tempe, Gorospe grew even more determined to fix the man she barely knew.

He had previously served time in prison for theft and assault charges, and had several documented run-ins with police elsewhere for substance abuse or mental-health-related issues.

Gorospe saw Malzahn as someone in need of fixing.

And she could be the fixer, those who knew her said. She could relate to anyone.

The two spoke by phone while he was in jail, the graphic details chronicled in recorded audio reviewed by The Republic. In some calls, he was appreciative of Gorospe's support, saying all he needed was a stable force to get his life together once again.

Often, however, the frenetic pace of the conversations turned dark — suggestive of his scattered and troubled mental state.

He occasionally talked about a need to kill.

A call on Sept. 28 recorded Malzahn talking about wanting to drink a baby's blood, biting its neck to "suck the life out of it."

CLOSE

An audio recording of Cathryn Gorospe and Charlie Malzahn is part of a phone conversation they had Oct. 6, 2017. Police believe Malzahn stabbed Gorospe to death the next day. Alejandro Barahona/azcentral.com

And on their last recorded call, placed the night before her trip to Flagstaff, Gorospe asked Malzahn to go on a dinner date after she picked him up. He asked her if she was going to "date rape" his drink. She replied, "probably, and leave your body chopped up in pieces."

They laughed. He responded, "Oh my God, I love it."

Conversation took a more serious tone after that as she outlined the rules for his release. Malzahn would be expected to check in with the bondsman daily, attend an Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous meeting twice a month, and meet with a counselor. He would also funnel all future paychecks into her account so she can keep tabs on his spending and do a drug test once a week.

The measures were to keep him "in line," according to police reports.

He agreed.

There was talk of camping in the area that night, too, after dinner. And swimming in Sedona that Saturday.

Security cameras from the jail captured the last known pictures of Gorospe.

Those photos would soon be seen around the country as news outlets covered the search for any sign of Gorospe, searchers hoping for the best but braced for the worst.

'Cathryn's dog is her life'

Gorospe's roommate reported her missing about 4:37 p.m. Oct. 8, roughly 48 hours after she drove north from the Valley. The roommate said Gorospe, was going to post bond for someone named "Charlie."

Her disappearance was strange from the beginning, the roommate said. Mostly, because she would never leave without a plan on who would tend to her dog.

"Cathryn's dog is her life," the woman told police.

As the investigation progressed, circumstances grew stranger.

In what's believed to be among her final telephone calls, police learned Gorospe called a friend about 3:30 p.m. Oct. 6 on her way to Flagstaff.

Her voicemail was playful then. It's haunting now.

"I left your number as an emergency contact in case I end up dead in the emergency room," she told her friend.

Cathryn Gorospe was remembered as a caring and devoted teacher at a vigil on Oct. 14, 2017.(Photo: Chris McCrory/The Republic)

Crisscrossing Arizona

White SUVs easily blend into traffic in Arizona, but Gorospe's white Toyota RAV4 had a bit of flair, with its Green Bay Packers tire cover, plate cover and stickers

There was also her distinctive license plate — THNXPOP, a tribute to her tight-knit family.

When Flagstaff police entered Gorospe and her vehicle into the National Crime Information Center database, the search almost immediately turned up results that would change the course of the investigation from a missing person's case to something far more sinister.

Investigators quickly learned that Tucson Police Department and Arizona Department of Public Safety consulted the NCIC database Oct. 7 after receiving reports of a reckless driver on the freeway. It was Gorospe's white Toyota RAV4.

Also that day, police records show Malzahn and an acquaintance were busted at a Tucson mall after using Gorospe's credit cards to make purchases at famous Footwear, Dollar General, Sears and a sunglass shop.

Police busted the men, seized the cards and merchandise, and let them go.

He tried to flee officers before crashing near 27th and Northern avenues, where he was taken into custody early Oct. 9.

Gorospe's SUV was towed to an evidence bay in the Phoenix Police Department's crime lab. The THNXPOP plate remained, but the plate cover and stickers had been torn off. The Green Bay Packers tire cover was found inside the vehicle.

Also inside the SUV were blood spots and smears, telltale signs of a struggle. Gorospe's body wouldn't be found for another week. Investigators would later say it appeared she was in the driver's seat and wearing her seat belt when she was stabbed to death.

'A lot of freaking issues'

Malzahn's sister told investigators that her brother had a dark, troubled past.

He became addicted to methamphetamine as a teenager and likely had paranoid schizophrenia that he was reluctant to treat, she said. He kept a notebook, police learned, that depicted gruesome and violent stories about slashing victims and mutilating their corpses.

Asked how long he had expressed the violent tendencies, she said it started when he was about 13 years old. He started using meth after he was allegedly molested by someone known to the family.

As a boy, he stabbed someone with a screwdriver, she told them.

More recently, about five years ago, she said he attacked a woman with an ax at a Phoenix-area drug den and "chopped off" her arm. No public records exist, the sister said, because it wasn't reported to police.

Police said the sister acknowledged Malzahn had "a lot of freaking issues" and struggled with addiction and substance abuse. Still, she said, a good person was "deep" inside of him.

The sister told police of meeting Gorospe for dinner two days before she bailed Malzahn out of jail. Gorospe admitted her brother "manipulated the s**t out of her."

It seemed Gorospe enjoyed his darker side, the sister said.

Nobody else seemed to understand.

"No one really loved Charlie," his sister said. "He was a freaking psychopath."

650 miles, meth and marijuana

As news of Malzahn's arrest in Phoenix spread, so did the search for Gorospe.

Law enforcement across the state canvassed roadsides, interviewed gas station attendants and sought any surveillance video that might have given a clue about Malzahn's route that could lead to her body.

They combed wooded hills near Williams, locating a white T-shirt that might have had blood on it near a remote campsite in the forest.

Cellphone pings suggested Malzahn and Gorospe spent about 30 minutes in the Williams area — he insisted on seeing his mother, grandmother and ex-girlfriend.

At about 6 a.m. Saturday — eight hours after Gorospe bailed him out of jail — Malzahn arrived at a man's house in Clifton, in eastern Arizona. He was driving a white SUV and trying to score marijuana and methamphetamine, the man told police. In a video recorded by the same man, they sang about "catching bodies" and bragged about being on the news.

The six-hour drive to Clifton was part of a 650-mile trip after Gorospe was killed.

Coffee, In-N-Out and a confession

Malzahn requested to speak to the lead detective on the case from a Maricopa County jail cell on Friday, Oct. 13. He couldn't remember specifics, but he said he had information to share.

It was in this jailhouse interview, partly made possible by fulfilling Malzahn's request for coffee and In-N-Out Burger, that investigators gleaned information leading to Gorospe's partially decomposed corpse 75 miles away.

Police records show Malzahn toyed with investigators and repeatedly asked about how much media attention the case would receive. He mused about whether he would receive the death penalty, and repeatedly focused on the body rather than the killing.

"What happened, that's irrelevant. All you want is the body. I'm gonna give you the body," he said, according to transcripts contained in police reports. "What happened will come up in court. ... She ended up dead, that's all that happened."

He told investigators that Gorospe's body was near a bridge somewhere near Mayer, a washed-out area near a convenience store he went to after dumping the body. He recalled seeing construction equipment.

Yavapai County investigators knew there was one store open at the time — the only Circle K in town. As police continued to interview Malzahn, investigators fanned out across the area, where construction equipment remained after the monsoonal floods from a few months earlier.

An hour after the search began, a Yavapai County detective found a decomposing woman's body on Nugget Mine Road, a couple of miles from the store off State Route 69, in Mayer.

She had a turquoise tank top that matched the image shared statewide of Gorospe walking into jail a week earlier. Her body appeared to have been dragged, and it looked as if someone had thrown handfuls of dirt over her remains.

Investigators used dental records to positively identify the body as belonging to Cathryn Gorospe. A medical examiner determined that, besides the 14 stab wounds, she had multiple broken ribs and defensive wounds on her hands.

'I just started sticking her'

But Malzahn said it was Gorospe who pulled out a silver-handled steak knife as they neared a camping area. He recalled her saying something to the effect of "it's time to die," according to the police narrative.

That's when he took the knife.

"I just started sticking her," the police report said he told investigators.

As Malzahn recalled, her body fell out the driver's side door and was run over by the SUV. He then put her body in the cargo area and drove about an hour to the Mayer dump site. He was "a little nervous driving around with her," Malzahn told police.

At the time of the killing, he was high on drugs he scored while in the Coconino County Jail and had been up for "a couple of days."

"For whatever reason, psychologically, I f-----g snapped, you know what I mean?" he told police. "I don`t know what it was, might have been the conversation, I don`t know what it was, man, but you know, she ended up f-----g dead, and I got some In-N-Out out of it."

Malzahn told police he went into the gas station in Mayer at 1 a.m., three hours after his release. Covered in blood, he said the clerk commented that it looked like he was having a bad night.

"You have no idea," he remembered saying.

He bought a pack of Marlboro cigarettes at 1:04 a.m., records and interviews later showed.

Before investigators left his cell at the end of a second jailhouse interview, Malzahn thanked them for the coffee. A detective asked if he could come back with follow-up questions in the future.

"Of course," Malzahn said.

Murder site? Murder weapon?

While Malzahn's descriptions quickly led police to Gorospe's body, he was less helpful about where the attack occurred.

He told investigators he and Gorospe had turned down a Forest Service road, past an abandoned barn. After the attack, he said he put her body in the cargo area of the SUV, then drove about an hour away to dump her body in Mayer.

To better pinpoint the place where Gorospe was killed, police consulted a botanist at Northern Arizona University to evaluate leaves found in the cargo area of her SUV. Samples of Gamble Oak, Big Tooth Maple and an unknown flowering plum helped narrow the search area to forests near Mayer and Williams.

A detective consulted a separate NAU researcher to discuss soil found in Gorospe's sock, the intent being to trace micro-organisms to the site of the killing. It remains unclear how successful those efforts were.

Flagstaff police say they have since narrowed the area where Gorospe was killed to a wooded area near Williams, but they have not yet been able to determine exactly where.

Additionally, the knife hasn't been found. The working theory is that Gorospe brought the knife with her, as Malzahn claimed in his interview with police, department spokesman Cory Runge said.

“They know where the knife came from," Runge said. "They (investigators) just don’t have the knife”

Still awaiting charges

According to public court records, the Coconino County Attorney's Office has not yet charged the man suspected of killing Cathryn Gorospe. Her brother didn't utter Malzahn's name during a 20-minute telephone interview.

It is not unprecedented for lengthy delays in formal charges being filed and the defendant being served, especially in a multijurisdictional case.

Prosecutors did not return multiple requests for comment for this story.

But Cory Gorospe said they have told him they have the luxury of time since Malzahn remains in custody in Maricopa County without bond for other crimes he's accused of that October weekend. Hearings have repeatedly been delayed, and he is next due in court May 7.

Time gives prosecutors more opportunity to build an "ironclad" case against him. It will help make an open-and-shut matter, he hopes.

"I'm finally starting to come to terms with it and start to heal myself," Gorospe said of the slaying. "But it's been a hard road."

He said he's aware of the recorded jail phone calls where his sister had sexually explicit conversations with the man 17 years her junior. Those could have been her trying to sympathize with the troubled person, he said. He's not interested in the missteps she might have taken or how she made herself vulnerable.

"We want to remember my sister how we remember her," he said.

Occasionally, news outlets will jump on an incremental update on the case. He's generally in favor of it, since news media played a role in helping the community band together and support his family. But exploitative TV crime shows have soured his stance on the ebb and flow of media attention — something he was already familiar with as a firefighter in Palm Springs.

"That's the nature of the beast," he said. "It's the hot topic at the time, but at the end of the day, everyone has to get on with their lives. It's the family that's still dealing with it."

He has his own thoughts about why Malzahn did it: She gave him an ultimatum. He wasn't receptive to it. And they were left to plan a funeral.

"I don't know why. I don't really care why," Cory Gorospe said. "I care that my sister was taken from my family, and we'll never see her again."